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\ OEATION 



COMMEMORATIVE 



THE LIFE AND SERVICES 



CHARLES SUMNER, 



PRONOUNCED BEFORE 



THE SUMNER LITERARY DEBATING SOCIETY OF 
STRAIGHT UNIVERSITY, 



EDWARD C. BILLINGS, 

AT 

NEW ORLEANS, LA., 

June 12, A. D. 1874. 



"Quidquid ex Agricola amavimus, qtiidqnid roirati sumus, manet maiisurumqiie est iu 
" auimis hominum, in seternitate teraporum, fama rerum," 



S NEW ORLEANS : 

JOHN W. MADDEN, PRINT, 73 CAMP STREET. 
I874. 

; 



Mr. President and Gentlemen of the 

Sumner Literary Debating Society, 

of the Straight University : 

History has been described by the most brilliant of 
modern historians to be " philosophy teaching by ex- 
ample." This is especially true of Biography. For 
in the life of an individual there is an attractiveness 
and a warmth which do not belong to events 
scattered over Empires and running through eras. 
It is part of God's economy that men truly great 
should be sources of influence for all time, inspiring 
in the minds of youth impulses for great exploits and 
quickening manhood and even age with admiration 
when emulation has ceased to be possible. He, who 
studies the steps by which great power over self and 
over others was attained learns quickest the secret of 
attaining great power for himself. He, who turns his 
attention to the career of those who have put into then- 
lives least of self and much of philanthropy, will be 
readily drawn into a life of self abnegation and resolute 
bravery in adherence to the right. Thus examples of 
goodness come to have not only the form and force of 
precepts but they have the cadence and rythm and 
harmony of poems. They proclaim virtue and illustrate 
it possibility, its beauty and its sure and great reward. 

Your wish, therefore, that the life and achievements 
of Charles Sumner should be put before you was not 



only a most merited tribute to his memory, but was 
most wise, since in your types and models and ideals of 
manhood his overshadowing excellence should have 
prominent place. 

For who more than he sympathized with the aspira- 
tions of youth, the kindly incentives of learning — above 
all who sympathized more ardently than he with those 
of you who are struggling with the peculiar embarass- 
ments springing from the prejudices against race! Who 
more loyal than he to all the rights of man, as man, 
independent of all distinctions arising from the acci- 
dents of birth ? Who more responsive than he to the 
protests of all whose rights were denied or fettered? 
There is, then, a peculiar fitness in our considering his 
great qualities and noble deeds, here, in the midst of a 
community, a large portion of which it was the labor 
of his life to emancipate and disenthrall and, in an in- 
stitution, where, in accordance with the sympathies of 
his whole nature and the efforts of his whole soul, knowl- 
edge is, at last, unveiled, to those from whom it had 
been so long hidden, and, like God's sunlight and rain, 
made open and accessible to all. 

Charles Sumner was born in the year 1811. His 
preparatory studies were pursued in the Boston Latin 
School. He graduated at the Harvard University, in 
the year 1830. He entered upon the study of the Law, 
and at the age of 23, commenced its practice in his 
native City of Boston. He was instinctively and under 
all circumstances a scholar. Learning clung to him as 
naturally as a garment. He was well grounded in the 
Law, for his legal studies had been very broad and very 



deep. Clients and causes poured in upon him. Op- 
portunities for a large and lucrative practice opened up 
to him, for his reputation and promise had preceded and 
heralded his entrance upon the profession. But he 
seemed to share the opinion of Burke that "the law 
sharpened but did not liberalize the mind," for he 
voluntarily declined this proffered clientelage. There is 
but one cause of public interest in the Courts with 
which I have seen that he, as an advocate, was 
connected, and that was a cause in which his love for 
humanity enlisted him. He argued with great power 
before the Supreme Court of Massachusetts against 
the constitutionality of separate colored schools. 

It was in these days of his early manhood, that he 
reported and published the Circuit Court decisions of 
Justice Story. To this labor he was led somewhat by 
his scholarly and legal tastes, but chiefly by the devoted 
friendship which he entertained for Justice Story, 
whose pupil, and, so to speak, younger brother, he had 
been at the Dane Law School. This friendship, which 
was germinated and nourished not alone from the affin- 
ity between two scholars, but also from the mutual 
appreciation existing between two gifted and pure men, 
was imperishably embalmed in a most discriminating 
and affectionate eulogy pronounced by the pupil upon 
the teacher, as a jurist, after his death, in connection 
with Pickering as a scholar, Allston as an artist, and 
Channing as a philanthropist. In his friendship for 
Story, as in all things else, was seen the love for the 
worthy, which animated and guided all his preferences 

Then came a residence of three years abroad, sedu- 



lously devoted to study in England and Europe, which 
still more enriched an already rich scholarship and 
deepened a love for humanity already absorbing. 

Upon his return this man, who had developed into a 
scholar, a statesman and a philanthropist, spoke, and 
spoke with tremendous power, in a series of orations 
delivered chiefly at the various seats of learning 
throughout the country, the most marked of which 
were, one on the " True Grandeur of Nations," which 
advocated with all the force of argument, illustrated 
from all the wealth of History, that the true aggran- 
dizement of nations was to be found in the walks of 
peace; one on "Fame and Glory," wherein was en- 
forced the great truth that "no time and permanent 
"fame can be founded except in labors which promote 
"the happiness of mankind; one on the "Law of Hu- 
man Progress," wherein was set forth in clearest light 
the doctrine that human institutions gravitate towards 
the right, and that the successive civilizations have ad- 
vanced the ideas of men near and still nearer to an ac- 
cord with that right; and one upon Granville Sharp, 
wherein were swept together and presented by lips that 
seemed to have been touched with a live coal from off 
freedom's own alter, the heroic acts of an English mer- 
chant, who, without any special fitness for such a mis- 
sion, except a heart warmed with a generous and un- 
conquerable love of freedom, by dint of individual will 
and individual effort, and in spite of tremendous oppo- 
sition continued through long years, succeeded in hav- 
ing the principle established never to be shaken that 
when a slave touched the soil of England he was from 



that moment forever free. It is in this oration, more 
than in any other emanation, that the deep and thrilling 
sympathy of Charles Sumner appears for the slave and 
for one struggling for right against legalized wrong; 
and as he follows Granville Sharp through his simple 
but great life, from his position as an apprentice of a 
linen draper, down to the time when, without having had 
the patronage of the so-called great, but by virtue of the 
good he had accomplished and the wrong he had de- 
troyed, his remains were interred in Westminister Ab- 
bey, that shrine of England's untitled nobility, he indi- 
cates and foreshadows his own capability for a great 
career, his own capability to tight giant wrong, without 
any prospective reward save the approval of conscience, 
with uncompromising hostility through long years till 
at last victory for the right should come. 

When his name had thus become familiar and en- 
deared to all who loved high principles, there came a 
troubling to the waters of politics in Massachusetts, 
which gave the then small band of abolitionists their 
first Senator from that State. On the 69th ballot Mr. 
Sumner was elected for a period of six years from the 
4th day of March, 1851. Following a precedent set 
by John Quincy Adams, he addressed to the Legislature 
a communication accepting the trust they had conferred, 
and with characteristic boldness and zeal declaring- his 
sympathy with the great movement to restrict slavery 
within the narrowest constitutional limits, which was 
then like a ground swell of the ocean commencing to set 
in among the people of the land. In these words he 
lays down the rule which as Senator he pledges himself 



to follow: "Since politics are simply morals applied 
"to public affairs, I shall find constant assistance from 
"those everlasting rules of right and wrong, which are 
" a law alike to individuals and communities, nay, which 
" constrain the omnipotent God himself in self-imposed 
"bonds." And, with this grand text as his guide, he 
entered upon his career as Senator — a career which was 
destined to extend over almost a quarter of a century, 
and to be connected with a struggle which, in results, 
was to be the most important of our age, in which he 
was to be a prominent actor and in some respects the 
leading spirit. 

Four years later in Faneuil Hall, he gave fuller utter- 
ance to his political creed. Said he on that occasion: 
"It was the sentiment of that great apostle of freedom, 
Benjamin Franklin, uttered during the trials of the 
Revolution, that ' where liberty is there is my country.' 
In a similar strain I would say, where liberty is there 
is my party. Such an organization is now happily 
constituted here in Massachusetts and in all the free 
States under the name of the Republican party. Fellow 
citizens, we found now a new party ! Its corner stone 
is freedom; its broad, all sustaining arches are truth, 
justice and humanity. Like the ancient Roman Capitol, 
at once a temple and a citadel, it shall be the fit shrine 
for the genius of American institutions." A grand 
prophecy, fearfully verified ! For though the Republic 
was convulsed by the shock of hundreds of thousands 
of opposing combatants, and our soil was drenched 
from the Potomac to the Mississippi with fraternal 
blood, while the nation's heart was each day wrung 



with fresh agony as her sons on each side by thou- 
sands daily fell ! Nevertheless the irrepressible, adaptive 
genius of constitutional liberty was able to preserve 
and did preserve our free, representative government, 
severed from the reproach and danger of slavery, 
purified, transformed into the guardian of impartial 
freedom — the "temple of free institutions" inviolate — 
the " citadel" still further fortified. 

When he entered the Senate in 1851, the slave in- 
fluence was an autocracy. It was timidly obeyed in 
the Executive Mansion, and was dominant in both 
Houses of Congress, and with few exceptions, with the 
public press of the country. It not only controlled the 
National policy, but it was insolent in its apparently 
confirmed power and was wrathful and resentful 
towards opposition. It made up in haughty intolerance 
for its conscious want of rightful strength. But with 
the bravery of those who attack great numbers sustain- 
ed only by a living sense of the justice of a cause, he 
struck blow after blow against this entrenched evil. 
He protrayed its horrors and its wrongs. He attacked 
it through History, through political economy, through 
ethics, and through the Holy Bible. Day after day, 
month after month and year after year his Philippics 
resounded through the Senate Chamber against this 
ramified, thoroughly organized and well nigh nationali- 
ized system, whose smile was courted as the passport to 
political power, whose frown was dreaded as the pre- 
cursor of a lasting banishment. Well nigh alone he 
breasted the sentiment of the whole Senate and the 
political aversion of those in power. How weary must 



8 

lie sometimes have been, as the assertion of the great 
doctrines of Human Liberty, and that too in a Republic, 
fell upon the ears of an audience only to provoke oppo- 
sition snd increase personal bitterness until it came 
near to obloquy! Who that remembers the fierce oppo- 
sition which he encountered when he sought to be 
heard on his Bill " Repealing the Fugitive Slave Law," 
can fail to remember the courage, the persistence, the 
resources, which he exhibited in a contest which to the 
vision of the multitude promised only defeat and disas- 
ter. But never faltering, never disheartened he fought 
on. 

In the Senate never did he allow an opportunity to 
pass to speak for the enslaved. And such words ! 
They had the fervor and faith of the utterances of the 
Hebrew prophets. They seemed to well up and over- 
flow from a soul filled with a sense of the hideousness 
of slavery, and with a longing to see all the slaves set 
free and a determination to accomplish their freedom 
by so accumulating the arguments that the moral sense 
of the nation must rouse itself from its apathy and go 
fearlessly with him. 

The most memorable of his Senatorial efforts are 
three: one of which he entitled "Liberty National, 
Slavery Sectional," in which he strove to prove, and 
did prove by the most exhaustive and rich collection of 
authorities drawn from the fathers, and from the line of 
argument drawn from the Constitution and the various 
relative provisions, that the government was one upon 
the principles and in the interests of freedom, and that 
the dogma of the .supporters of slavery that where the 



9 

Constitution went there it carried and protected slavery, 
was an arrogant assumption. His intense sympathy 
with the oppressed, and the retribution which he de- 
voutly believed sooner or later attended oppression, he 
breathed forth in the concluding sentence, borrowed 
from an Oriental writer: "Beware," said he, "of the 
"groans of wounded souls; oppress not to the utmost a 
" single heart, for a solitary sigh has power to overset 
" the whole world." 

The second of his grand Congressional efforts he de- 
nominated "The Crime Against Kansas." It was a pro- 
test against the repeal of the Ordinance of Freedom 
known as the Missouri ' ' Compromise." It was more than 
an argument, though as such it was massive ; it was also 
an impassioned note of warning, addressed to the 
thoughtful throughout the country, to beware of the 
aggressions of slavery, and it was a denunciation 
against slavery big with the threat of its impending 
overthrow, now that a face-to-face and life-and-death 
struggle had been precipitated between it and freedom. 
Listen to his entreaty, remonstrance and confident pre- 
diction: " From the depths of my soul," said he, " as a 
" loyal citizen and as a Senator, I plead, I remonstrate 
" and protest against the passage of this bill. I strug- 
" gle against it as against death; but as in death itself, 
" corruption puts on incorruption and this mortal body 
" puts on immortality, so from the sting of this 
" hour I find assurances of that triumph by which 
" Freedom will be restored to her immortal birthright 
" in the Republic." 

It was for this he received the violence, which, like 



10 

that buffet to which more than mortal lips replied 
" God shall smite thee, thou whited sepulchre," to his 
other qualities added that last and most irresistible in a 
great moral cause — that of great personal suffering en- 
dured for that cause's sake. It was for this he received 
the blow which, in the Senate Chamber — the theatre of his 
prolonged struggles, and destined to be that of his great 
victory — felled him to the floor. His cause, strong to 
invincibility before, from that moment took on new 
strength from the person of its advocate. Thenceforth 
throughout the world, those who had sorrowed for the 
slave, won to a Senator thus smitten, by a feeling in 
which admiration and sympathy were blended, were 
unconsciously drawn into a more fierce antagonism to- 
wards a system which had been the real author of this 
indignity and cruelty. Thereafter from his lips words 
of protestation or incitement doubly inflamed, for they 
of right kindled a zeal which has turned the tide in 
many a moral conflict, in that they were spoken by one 
upon whom had been set the seal of persecution, in de- 
sign wrathful, but in effect a new and higher conse- 
cration. 

After a sojourn abroad under medical treatmemt for 
several years, he was enabled to resume his seat in the 
Senate. He renewed his unabated warfare in his grand- 
est effort — one which tasked to the utmost, even his 
moral heroism which he styled the " Barbarism of 
Slavery." In this effort he assumed the offensive. He 
attacked slavery from foundation to turret. He 
arraigned it before the Bar of the Public Opinion of the 
civilized world and charged it not only with being a 



11 

system of unmitigated wrongs, but as blighting and 
degrading the civilization which tolerated it. His other 
animadversions had been bitter, this was gall; they 
had been condemnatory, this was almost an anathema ; 
they had been directed largely to considerations which 
would restrict slavery and prevent its further expansion 
in the new States and Territories, this one sought by a 
thorough exposition of its vices, its violence and its 
enormities — of its disastrous consequences to slaves, to 
masters and to commonwealths, to overwhelm and up- 
root it. There was and there could be no answer 
either on the score of justice or of statesmanship to this 
terrific assault. Its boldness was electric. Ringing 
like a clarion through the land, it did much to multiply 
and unite the opponents of slavery, and animate and 
stimulate them to a wide-spread effort extending through 
the free States which, made the party for freedom de- 
termined, aggressive and triumphant. It was at this 
point in his struggle when, either from the calm and 
protracted reflections of a sick-chamber, or from an 
observation of outward events, he became imbued with 
a greatly augmented confidence in immediate success 
and he not only continued to be a champion, but he 
became a herald of victory. 

Meanwhile his cause which he had presented solely 
in its moral aspects, had, from reasons of expediency as 
well as of justice, been adopted by a great political 
national party. Many, who had not been attracted by 
the inherent merit of principles when they had nothing 
else to recommend them, at once espoused them, now 
that they had become the tenets of a great and growing 



12 

organization, marching on to victory at the polls. It is 
thus that God in his Providence secures His results 
among- men. He allies principles to human selfishness 
and maintains and brings to triumph pure and unselfish 
doctrines by bringing to their support the baser pas- 
sions. What the principles of the early Abolitionists 
lost by this alliance in disinterestedness, they gained in 
coarser but effective force. The religious creed, or, per- 
haps better, the humanitarian! principles of those who 
supported Birney, thereby consciously finding political 
ostracism, had become the platform upon which unnum- 
bered candidates expected to be elected to honorable 
and lucrative positions. And so the campaign of 1860 
was made by the Republican party throughout the 
North, by some who fought against slavery for rights 
sake, by others from a sort of local patriotism, and by 
others still for the loaves and fishes of office. Thus 
constituted, it was successful. Surely such a party 
needed some quickening, some transformation, some 
baptism before it could be truly cmalified for any great 
work for the nation or humanity. 

This capacitating and ennobling force came, and 
came unexpectedly, from a terrible civil war. For 
slavery, unwisely for itself, had determined to risk all 
upon the arbitrament of the sword. The opening of ac- 
tual hostilities struck the Northern mind like a sudden 
blow. It produced consternation. Then followed the 
perception that the States divided would be States de- 
generate, petty principalities, an easy prey to their own 
jealousies or to foreign ambition. As the proportions 
of the contest enlarged, came the stimulus which ever 



attends a gigantic undertaking. There was, too, the 
absorbing interest which fathers, brothers and sons, fallen 
or fighting in a cause, could alone create. Soon the en- 
ormous expenditure made success a growing necessity. 
All this gave to moral ideas a supremacy which ordi- 
narily they do not possess in national affairs, and, 
added to the influence of those who watched events 
chiefly to see how the great interests of humanity 
were advanced or retarded, opened up an opportunity 
for the acquittance by the nation of what had been re- 
ally the nation's sin. Thus, partly from selfish motives, 
partly from much higher ones, was brought about the 
abolition of slavery throughout the United States. In 
this memorable contest, what part did Charles Sumner 
take? When you contemplate his lifelong principles 
you can tell in advance what measures he urged, and 
with what spirit he urged them. 

A civil war is a terrible ordeal, not only for the State, 
but for individuals. Not only is the destiny of the na- 
tion made to hang upon the result of a battle or a cam- 
paign, not only are the bands of civil society loosened, 
and the ordinary restraints upon the citizens relaxed; but 
the prominent personages in the Cabinet and in the field 
have pressed upon them duties which test to the utmost 
their intellectual and moral calibre, for they are com- 
pelled to solve questions and settle upon movements and 
lines of policy of momentous consequence to the com- 
munity, with little opportunity for mature deliberation 
and none for aid outside their own genius and spirit. 
This was peculiarly true in our civil war on the part of 
the North ; for there was demanded not only military 



14 

skill of high order, not only administrative ability ca- 
pable of providing- the means of vast and continued 
military movements, but the spirit of the people had to 
be kept up to the point which allowed of immense per- 
sonal sacrifices for the common good, and also the ques- 
tion of slavery had to be dealt with wisely and boldly. 
Mr. Sumner developed no special ability in matters 
purely military. He was excelled by many in matters 
of administration. But as a man in whom the people 
trusted for high and sustaining impulse, he Avas unsur- 
passed. His zeal glowed and radiated, like the light, 
throughout the whole North. The earnestness of his 
convictions, then, above all other times, wrought con- 
viction in others. His prophecies rekindled the hopes 
of the desponding and imparted courage to those who 
were ready to take counsel of their fears. His enthu- 
siasm became intenser as the emergencies became more 
alarming. Until by virtue of his never-flinching advo- 
cacy of the right, in the midst of no matter what dan- 
gers, he had accorded to him, both among the people 
and in the nation's counsels, a prominence which mere 
intellectual greatness could not have attained. From 
the beginning to the end of the war he represented in 
his words and acts a disinterestedness of motive and a 
loftiness of devotion to country which aided much in 
securing ultimate success. 

On the subject of slavery he never wavered. He 
was an early and incessant advocate of emancipation. 
He pressed it as a measure of the clearest right and, 
therefore, as in the highest and most enduring sense, 
expedient. He also urged it as a means of national 



15 

defense, founded upon reasons which evidenced its 
practical wisdom when tested by the doctrine of imme- 
diate material consequences. Many men contributed 
to this measure, and the official responsibility of the 
act of emancipation finally rested upon a president 
whose austere simplicity and integrity of life, together 
with his martyrdom, has given him an immediate and 
high position in the world's estimation; but of all the 
men who contributed to bring it about, no one brought 
to bear an enthusiasm more truly sacred or a faith more 
implicit or, a force which in the aggregate, was more 
valuable when judged by the rare combination of high 
qualities from which it was derived, or the effective- 
ness with which it was exerted. When the storm 
which darkened the nation's skv was thickest, his 
sole fear was lest an opportunity for stupendous 
good might be unimproved and pass never to return. 
Thus the war with its terrors and horrors afforded an 
opportunity for accomplishing for humanity that which 
argument and eloquence and learning had only helped 
to render possible. So when one sums up his labors 
during the war, it should be said, that he stands forth 
as, even now, a historic character remarkable for the 
lofty tone which he imparted to discussion, and for 
the elevated aim which he helped to give to measures 
and as being one of the few who, with a union of States 
assailed to the very verge of disruption, and, when it 
was felt that a mistake would have been a calamity, 
not alone to our government, but to free institutions 
everywhere, never for one moment countenanced a 
compromise of what he deemed right, who was sleep- 



16 

less in his vigilance for the interests of humanity, and 
as one who advocated and helped to carry through the 
emancipation of slavery because it was justice to the 
slave, and was right in the sight of God. He was great 
in his prolonged advocacy of principles which at first 
were treated as fanaticisms, but which were so strong 
in their justice that they successfully defied and finally 
overthrew the stoutest wrong. He was greater when 
events had culminated so that a nation's deliverance 
from overwhelming danger, was to be determined ac- 
cording to the wisdom of the measures adopted, and 
he, undismayed, still clung to the everlasting and un- 
changing law of right. 

His attitude prior to the war was stern opposition to 
all compromises with slavery; during the war a heroic 
devotion to Liberty and the Union, sustained by an un- 
faltering trust in the triumph of both. Since the war 
his efforts have been to secure by Constitution and 
statute complete protection to the freedmen, to invest 
them practically with all the rights which inhere in the 
man and in the citizen, and to give guaranties for the 
enjoyment of those rights. There are, however, two 
measures which he has advocated which deserve special 
mention. I refer to the "Civil Rights Bill" and the 
"Resolution to erase from the National Battle Flags the 
names of the inscribed battles in which the Union 
armies had been victorious." 

His Civil Rights Bill may be summed up in this: It 
gives to all races and classes the full and equal enjoy- 
ment of all the municipal public rights. It is a most 
unjust criticism to characterize this bill as trenching upon 
or meddling with social rights. For there is no social 



17 

equality in a common right to ride in a public convey- 
ance, or to stop at a public hotel, any more than there 
is in the common right to breathe the vital air. It 
leaves social intercourse to be regulated entirely by in- 
dividual taste. There is not only humanity but im- 
mense sagacity underlying this bill. The sooner Fed- 
eral statutes unalterably fix these great common rights, 
the denial of which is desired only by reason of preju- 
dices bequeathed by slavery, and thereby secure the 
harmless well-being, comfort and progress of the for- 
merly proscribed and oppressed, the sooner will the en- 
ergies of our community be devoted to the common pur- 
pose of developing our material resources and attaining 
the prosperity which, with harmonious and wisely di- 
rected action on our part, is so clearly attainable. It 
should, also, be borne in mind that, while these rights 
should be firmly secured by the sanctions of Federal 
law, it should be the object on the part of those in whose 
behalf the law is enacted, by the acquirement of thor- 
ough education, by industrious and economical habits, 
by the attainment of distinction in the various voca- 
tions and professions and personal standing and weight 
in all the relations of life, and, above all, by the mani- 
festation of a spirit of kindness towards all, to render 
the law easy of enforcement and, at no distant day, un- 
necessary. 

His resolution to erase from our flags the names of 
Union victories elicited much censure and provoked the 
condemnation of the Legislature of his own State, 
which, happily, was revoked on the last day of his at- 
tendance in the Senate and three days before his death. 
In this resolution, too, was not only the spirit of philan- 
thropy, but also the sagacity of the statesman. The flag 



18 

of a nation is the symbol of the nation's power and honor 
and glory. It is a common emblem — in peace the pro- 
tection, in war the inspiration — cf the whole country. 
When, therefore, a great civil insurrection, in no matter 
how indefensible a cause, lias been decisively put down 
and an assured peace has been attained, I think the gov- 
ernment would wisely remove from its common ensign 
all memorials of victories of one section over another, 
and, so far as possible, all traces of fraternal struggles. 
While with a firm hand it should guard all from op- 
pression and proscription, and should secure to all the 
unrestricted opportunities for individual happiness and 
progress, it should with equal consideration preserve all 
from needless humiliation. The unsectional, unpartisan 
character of Charles Sumner's purposes, his manly in- 
dependence and his enlarged and comprehensive range 
of view nowhere appear more conspicuously or more 
commandingly than in this act, where in advance of, 
and even against the public opinion of the country he 
sprang forward to do this swift justice to those who had 
for a lifetime been his bitterest opponents. It showed 
the stretch of his vision and the height of his motives. 
What a fitting attitude for the conclusion of his 
beneficent life ! In one hand he holds a statute, which 
removed from the former slave the last impediments in 
the way of his equal access through all public means 
to the public comforts and enjoyments, the public 
ameliorations and advantages of life: in the other hand 
he holds a resolution which sought to blot from the 
national flag all reminders of triumph over those who 
fought that slavery might be continued. These two 
measures together would make the nation just, consid- 
erate, wise and generous. If their spirit could be 



19 

cordially adopted and acted upon, it would eradicate 
all bitterness and would leave us, as a community, with 
protection for all, with offense towards none, in our 
feelings, as we are in our interests, indissolubly united. 

The presence and touch of death came unexpectedly 
to Mr. Sumner, as they come to all. There had been 
unusual joy at the recission of the censure of Massachu- 
setts ; unusual fatigue at extraordinary labors in the 
Senate Chamber, when there was a calm arathermsr 
of his garments about him, and midst a hush which 
had fallen upon a whole people, he fell asleep and 
henceforth lives with God, and in the minds of the o-ood 
of this age and all future ages. 

In dauntless opposition to wrong on broadest grounds 
he is most resembled by Burke. In scholarship he 
outranks the younger Adams and Everett, and in an 
intimate knowledge of what might be termed the Lite- 
rature of Philanthropy, all modern Statesmen. His 
efforts in breadth of mere intellect were not equal to 
those of Webster, and in logical subtlety fell short of 
those of Calhoun; but they showed a commanding 
intellect, to a distinguishing degree comprehensive and 
logical. His statesmanship was of a high order when 
judged with reference to its historic wisdom, its forecast 
or its adaptation of means to ends, and is well nigh 
solitary in its preeminence when viewed as illustra- 
ting a broad, sleepless love of mankind, insisted on with 
the valor of chivalry and the self-devotion of the 
martyrs. 

About the same time two men emerged into public 
life, and each, after having been an actor in stirring- 
events for about the period of twenty-five years, pre- 
maturely worn out with his labors, found repose in 



20 

death. The one became Emperor of France ; the other 
was an American Senator. The aim of one was per- 
sonal aggrandizement ; that of the other the advance- 
ment of humanity. The great effort of the one was to 
found an hereditary dynasty ; that of the other to free 
the slave. The one after seeing his dynasty melt away 
before the wrath of a people resuming sovereignty for 
themselves, died in exile, crownless and cheerless ; the 
other lived to see four millions of slaves set free and 
enfranchised and descended to the grave cheered by 
their gratitude, beloved by all his countrymen and 
revered throughout the world. Chiselhurst will for- 
ever suggest the frailty of princely ^erogatives and the 
sadness and mockery of the splendor of titled power; 
while from Mount Auburn will be suggested the im- 
mortal vig-or and freshness of renown won in struo-o-les 
for our fellow-men, and the grandeur and pathos which 
can be crowded into the life of a Republican Citizen. 

When that cortege witnessed by that hundred thous- 
and sorrowing fellow-citizens accompanied his mortal 
remains to his simple grave, they did but give expression 
to the sense of personal bereavement which saddened 
every heart in the nation, and did but anticipate and 
attest the verdict of history. Great in his love of man, 
great in his obedience to the right, he has entered upon 
an immortality of fame. Like the labors of Howard, 
and the songs of Burns, the utterances of Sumner will 
kindle tender and grateful emotions in the hearts of 
men so long as human hearts continue to beat. In al- 
most his own language on an occasion of heartfelt 
tribute, be it said : let the politician and time server 
stand aside, a pure patriot, the friend of humanity, the 
fearless vindicator of the Right has gone to his reward. 



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